Boom or Bust

Recently I found it interesting to me personally or I thought I noticed an interesting phenomenon of sorts.

Being a country kid I can best describe what I notice as being like seeing a bunch of chickens in the yard or free range chickens. They are wandering about looking for food etc. Then all of a sudden someone dumps a bunch of corn out and the chickens all swarm it.

I see this phenomenon with search engine traffic. SEO does not seem to play a part in this phenomenon. Nor does an individual viral topic. Overall search engine traffic, dumped in particular places.

SEO is continually changing, so it's pointless trying to keep up - Google is anti-SEO as it considers it gaming, if overdone, anyway.

If you have QUALITY content in a low competition NICHE, you will get traffic. Or it could be Google testing your content for time on page/interaction. Or the topic got shown on TV and people Googled. Lots of reasons.

They are not seo, they are not niche, they are definitely not niche, they are complete garbage But Google loves it because they are testing it for page interaction, even though no one is interacting and its garbage makes no sense.

I went into channeling mode and I can tell you that he wants to know why some people get good traffic, and he does not.

Or he might be wondering why all his traffic disappeared lately.

My spirit guide has a head cold, so can't be absolutely sure.

Hope you are okay, Paul, by the way.

How is the part time job going? I sort of envy you, to be honest. The only part time job I could get would be cutting rubber. And that would mean trailing around a forest at night with only the kraits for company. The internet provides or I starve...

I have noticed what you are speaking of, and here is my experience. For instance I am thinking of a site that isn't the caliber of Hubpages, getting way more of what seems to be "google love" on all their content. It searches (including my content) amazingly well. What is kind of interesting is that is isn't just the quality articles on the site or niche categories, but ones with several typos, grammatical errors and that is sometimes even incoherent. It is why it was grabbing my attention to the degree it is. To answer your OP, I don't know what would explain that observation.

With all the experience some of us have from being on these sites, it seems to be a drastic change from any variation of a Google response in the past, good or bad, or various possible updates where we saw some minor changes and fluctuations in our traffic. Curious what others think on this observation that have also noticed it.

I am doing okay, Will, I am managing my Canadian friend's junk business whilst he goes off launching another franchise in Georgia (I'm down in Florida). As well as going out on jobs and trying to persuade workers to pull their weight, I am also doing some work for him at home trying to organize the backlog of invoices, receipts etc. into some sense of order, in case my friend ever gets checked out by the tax people.

It's all relatively flexible and casual, so I can certainly keep up with the online stuff, although not write a great deal of new material at present. I personally could probably survive on a fairly basic Bohemian subsistence level, including a little bit of starving, but I also have the wife and teenager to think about, and they insist on having food and clothing etc.

That junk business sounds a little like HP. Getting stuff in order, persuading people to do stuff that needs to be done... Perhaps, it just sounds like life.

Well, at least, for me at any rate, the site is taking a little more of the weight recently with traffic up a little and running at about two thirds of what I need.

I'm not producing much new stuff in any area, at the moment. Ever since I stopped smoking, I find writing hard work. I suppose the brain will eventually recover. If the worst comes to the worst. I will head back to the fags

Stay off the cigs. Your brain will recover. I speak as an ex heavy smoker.

What's killing me is the treble whammy. HP down. Squidoo down. And Adsense continuing its long term decline. I have eggs in other baskets, but they don't do as well as those three historically. Still always exploring other options, of course.

I have done reasonably well from online earning at times. The trouble is that it can fluctuate wildly and my peaks don't earn me enough to protect me from the troughs.

I have the advantage of living in a country where a little money goes a long way. Saving is not so hard, in times of plenty.

Even so, it is hard looking ahead to see an easy way forward for small operators. That makes it important that this site recovers. Which is one reason I get so tired of the pointless gripes of so many here.

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